Days
by Alianne Potter-Black
Summary: It is sometime surprising how fast time can pass by when you want it to stay still. But then, life is what happens when you aren't paying attention.  the years after glee for a member running away from her life. AU


**Disclaimer:****see the bottom of the page please**

**summary:******It is sometime surprising how fast time can pass by when you want it to stay still. But then, life ********is what happens when you aren't paying attention.****

**Authors random Quote: "Running from the question doesn't give you the answer. Instead, it makes pain increase with distance, distance increase with time, and time just doesn't seem to ever want to slow down and listen to what you have to say."**

Author's note: this is my first Glee fiction. I hope you will enjoy.

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><p><em><strong>Days<strong>_

Some days are harder than others. Some days you wake up and think: "today is their anniversary" or "today is his birthday". Those are the days when you jump out of bed and get about half way out the door before your mind catches up with your body and you remember then just where you are- where they are. And you have to turn back around and try not to dwell on the fact that their anniversary no longer matters and that he simply isn't around to celebrate his birthday anymore.

And then, of course, there are the nights when you've had about ten drinks too many and you and start to call him for a ride home. About six digits in, you remember- he doesn't live there anymore… you don't live there anymore. You live here now and nothing you do can change the fact that on those days- and those nights- the reality of just exactly what happened seems to hit you in the face with an armored glove.

Once you left, it didn't take you very long to throw that life behind you. Within four years, you had your teaching credentials…within five you had almost forgotten them on the best of days. When you started teaching, your life fell in to a bit of a routine and the days where you wanted nothing more than to fall into a swimming pool filled with memories like a pensieve and drown yourself in them became less and less frequent. But they still came…God how they still came. And when they did? Well those were the days when you hid in your apartment with the lights off and a million candles lit, looking at pictures that you just couldn't seem to make yourself admit that you still had. And when there was school? On those days, you put on a simple t-shirt and jeans- instead of the impeccable outfits which you usually wore- and you taught with song and told stories to the children and when they were at recess, you pretended that they didn't notice the tears in your eyes when you thought they weren't looking.

Six years after you started teaching- eight since you left behind the life that you never seemed to be able to forget- after nearly seven years of lonely birthdays, non-existent Christmases and silently loathing everything to do with Halloween and Valentines day, you had finally started to move on. Your co-workers (whom you refused to call friends, because look what happened to the last ones you called by that name) and current "insignificant other" decided that it was time for you to go home. You resisted for a long time and made up every excuse you could think to make, but it did no good. That summer after school was let out, you packed the three people that you could actually stand for long periods of time into a rented sedan after a plane ride that seemed to last three times longer than it actually did and drove the three hours from the airport to a town you swore you'd never visit again. You showed them the town, your old home and where you once went to school. And one day, near the end of your three week trip, while your now viably named friends were relaxing in the hotel pool, you made the long memorized trip to the home of an old friend and left a postcard with your address and a three word sentence that simply begged for a reply- "How are they?"

After leaving the hellhole of a memory and returning to the place that you all but forced yourself to call home, life seemed to return to normal for you. As you checked your mail one morning in early august, you noticed a letter in your box- a letter with horribly familiar handwriting and devastatingly short contents. He too had written only a few words, and they alone sent you back another five years, you didn't reply. "_We miss you"_ it said in his hand writing "_come home soon_".

It sometimes surprised you how fast time can pass by when you want it to stay still. It had been nearly ten years now. You knew what this year meant; better than you wished to, actually. September came with another letter, again not signed, though this time a bit longer. You struggled with yourself before opening it, but when you did, it read in his same handwriting: "S_he's playing for your old team. Where as he truly is his father's son. You'd be proud, I'm sure_._" _And just after all hallows – "_he is JUST like his father"_ he didn't elaborate on that one.

You finally wrote back just after Christmas that year and you signed your new name. You told him a bit about your new life and asked him to keep writing. But it seemed that every time you received a letter from him, something bad had happened. And it soon came to a point when every time you saw a letter from him, you would start to cry because every time you opened it could be the one that read "s/_he's gone. I'm sorry, we just couldn't do enough_".

Two more years pass you by. Those days that used to hurt you oh-so-very much, seem to all but fade into nothingness. You begin to think that you can successfully put your past behind you. You're remembering how to forget, but it seems that you are also forgetting how to remember. You begin to do the things that used to make you so happy again, and, tentatively, you put the past where you think it belongs, finally letting go of your pain.

Then one morning before school you wake up to a new un-opened email. You can clearly see who it's from, but you can't seem to make yourself open it, you decide to read it later instead. You turn on your telly, put on a pot of coffee, and settle down to watch the morning news before getting ready for the day. For the most part it was stuff which you already knew- a new headmaster for the school where you taught; hot, hot weather and so such the sort. But when the telecaster turned over to the international side of things to talk about a mass shooting in a school in Ohio, you simply screamed and turned off the telly, rushing from where you sat to the computer in your room. You logged on with shaking hands to open the email that filled you with so much dread.

"_I don't know if this will get to you before the news does" _ the letter began, "_but yesterday there was a shooting here at school. Sue is gone, Emma is wounded and no-one knows about Mr. Schue. Five students were killed, along with three other teachers. He was shot, but is stable; I can't say the same for his parents. Finn said Puck's not gonna make it much longer, and Quinn died saving some of the Cheerio's. I wish I could tell you more San didn't make it out; the shooter got her last, just as she got him. She died a hero. I wish I could say that _she _made it out alright too, but I don't know, I'm sorry. Yours won't be the only empty seat at the reunion this year, though I still wish you'd come back. Please try to take care of your self- Artie. P.S. I found this picture on San, and thought I'd attach it for you- she died with it in her hand." _ Attached was a photo from almost sixteen years before, fourteen people standing around a hospital bed wherein a young Latina lies with a child in a pink blanket. Just next to her stood a young blonde woman and a tan male of a similar age both holding a blue blanket for themselves. Scattered around the photo, were six other young men all holding children of their own and women, many of whom were in varying degrees of pregnant. To one side of the Latina, crying, with a thousand watt smile as she looked at the woman in the bed and the child which she held, was a lean young blonde woman waving at the camera. As you studied the last picture taken of you with all of your friends before the devastating loss of the child being held in Quinn's arms and the loss of the child you yourself were carrying at the time, you pull out your phone and call in sick to work for the first time in nearly eleven years. As you hang up the phone you stumble back to bed and cry yourself to sleep thinking for the first time in months about the life you left behind.

From that day on, things just never seemed to get better. The days seemed to get worse and worse, but the nights were what terrified you the most. You began to fear sleep, knowing what and who was waiting for you. Suddenly more and more, you began to realize that running away may have not been the best answer to the question posed by the twenty year old you were when you once asked long ago- "what do I do now?"

Fourteen years. It's been fourteen years now, you know. She still hasn't been found and you are still trying with all your might to forget her and them and all they once stood for. But still there are those days. Those horrible days when you wake up thinking "hey, today's his birthday, I should get him a card" - only now, it's a different him, a him with a bit less baggage- or you think "today is their anniversary"- only _they_ aren't around anymore to celebrate it. but worst of all, worse than waking up not remembering who you are suppose to be pretending for, worse even than waking up alone- are the times when you wake up and think of _her - _the only person not in the picture that you now study religiously when you get a bit too drunk. The times when you wake up and think to yourself "today was our anniversary". Those are the days when you jump out of bed, only to head to the toilet and up-end your stomach paying heed to the porcelain - oh lord, Coach Sue used to call Kurt that- god. Those are the days when you go into work and teach to forget, because if you get caught drinking at school one more time, they are going to let you go, and you couldn't handle that.

And then, of course, there are those nights when you had a bit too much to drink and you go to take a cab home, but you give him the wrong address, an address that doesn't even truly exist in this country. And when the cab pulls up and you realize that the driver has taken you to the wrong place, you get out anyways, because it's just too damn embarrassing to have to say that you forgot where you live now. Then you get about halfway home before calling another cab, because your feet cant make you walk forty-something miles even when you are so shit faced you think you're following her home.

There are times when you text Artie at nearly midnight and wait for him to call you back and tell you that you'll be alright. There are times when you call San's phone knowing full well that the person about to answer will never know who you are, but she just sounds so much like her mother that it makes you feel better for a few seconds. You both fight against and force yourself to fall asleep, knowing that only there will you truly be yourself again.

And in those times, the nights that you so dread, the days that you pray never come back, but yet still live to know exist, those are the times when you realize, more than anything else, that the life you now lead, is not but a spec of dust compared to the one from which you continue to run away.

**So I know this was kind of vague, but it was originally something completely different. I hope it isn't horrible, but it does mark my first non-Harry Potter Fanfiction ever, so please be kind with you criticism. **

**Thanks Muches and Bunches,**

**Alianne**

**P.S. don't own anything other than the idea and the pensive line. Oh, and the one about the armored glove**


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